Ceylon Financial Sector Fund vs NAMAL Growth Fund

Ceylon Financial Sector Fund is run by Ceylon Asset Management Limited and NAMAL Growth Fund by National Asset Management Limited, so this compares two houses as well as two funds. Both are equity funds licensed by the Securities and Exchange Commission of Sri Lanka, which means they are doing broadly the same job, and the differences below are differences in how each house has chosen to do it.

The clearest difference is the management fee. Ceylon Financial Sector Fund charges 1.00% a year against NAMAL Growth Fund's 1.50%, a gap of 0.50 percentage points. On LKR 100,000 held for a year that is about LKR 500 more retained by a holder of Ceylon Financial Sector Fund, before any difference in what the two funds actually earn. The fee is deducted from the fund's assets before the unit price is struck, so it applies whatever the market does — which makes it the one number here that is knowable in advance.

Over the 180 days to the date shown, NAMAL Growth Fund returned +0.18% against Ceylon Financial Sector Fund's −12.71%, a gap of 12.89 percentage points. That is one window: a different 180 days would very likely order them differently, and neither figure predicts the next six months. Both are price returns on the bid side and exclude income a fund distributed rather than accrued into its price.

Both have moved by a similar amount, with annualised volatility of 16.18% and 17.23%. For two funds in the same category that is the expected result, and it means neither has taken noticeably more price movement than the other to arrive at its return.

Among the 15 equity funds we price daily, Ceylon Financial Sector Fund ranks 14th on 180-day return and NAMAL Growth Fund 2nd, against a category median of −4.51% over the same window. On fee they sit 2nd and 7th cheapest of the 15, where the median is 1.50%. On how much the price has moved, Ceylon Financial Sector Fund is 3rd steadiest and NAMAL Growth Fund 5th.